Re: Licensing debian/*
Дмитрий Ледков <dmitrij.ledkov@gmail.com> writes:
> I have a few questions about licensing debian/*
>
> The proposed copyright format and policy suggest that the packaging
> data should be licensed.
Like any other intellectual work expressed in some form, with very few
exceptions.
> And that has raised a few questions for the trivial package I'm
> working on.
>
> 1) What is the recommended license? Public domain? Considering
> derivatives such is the one based on opensolaris (Nexetra?)
For simplicity, and only considering free software: license the
‘debian/’ directory under the same terms as the aggregate license for
the package.
For cases where there is something significant in ‘debian/’ that I
would prefer under a different license (in my case, usually GPL):
license it under those terms.
> 2) Can licensing debian/* lead to license incompatability of the
> final .deb?
The legal issues would be the same as for any other mixed-license
work, with the same questions applying.
Unless the ‘debian/*’ files and the package's files can somehow be
construed as interacting via copyright (e.g. one is a derivative work
of the other), I would think the only consideration is whether they
can all be distributed DFSG free.
> 3) Shall I mention copyright of the previous maintainer? (Even if
> everything in debian/* was removed and created from scratch)
That all depends on how likely it is that your work is construable as
a “derived work” of the previous one. Even if you removed it all and
did it all from scratch, is it true that your work is not derived from
the preceding work?
> 4) What to do if the current licencing of debian/* is unknown?
> (Maintainer gone MIA)?
Same as for any other copyright-status-unknown work: try hard to get a
license, either from existing information somewhere, or from
contacting the copyright holder.
> Shall I assume "complies with GPL unless proven otherwise" (a pun =)
No, consensus seems to be to assume *no license at all* (that is, no
grant of permission at all for the work) in the absence of a clear
license grant. That doesn't change just because the work is in a
‘debian/’ directory.
--
\ “I hate it when my foot falls asleep during the day, because |
`\ that means it's gonna be up all night.” —Steven Wright |
_o__) |
Ben Finney
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